Over time, music taste and consumption have become much more diverse and up to the user. Through on-demand streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, we are no longer restricted to radio or record labels. Independent artists have been enabled to publish and create by themselves, making an entrance into the industry much easier. With that, we have also seen a great amount of change in the modern listener. We now put much greater importance on listening habits and styles. Music has become a personal identifier, and we can track and categorize ourselves by what we consume. This is evident just from the pure popularity of Spotify Wrapped and how we share it across social media platforms.
In a paper by Beatrice Rammstedt and Oliver P. John, entitled “Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German” Rammstedt and John work to better understand a user’s listening habits through a personality inventory test. This test was then scaled to apply to specific factors of the individual. The set of questions was then focused on the "Big 5" personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Then, translating these personality identifiers into listening habits, we can create connections between listening habits and personality traits.
We will first explore a general overview of how all of these traits affect factors including the mood and era of a playlist. Then, we will take a more granular look at each of the traits and how they relate to specific playlist features in each of the following tabs of this website. Notice that we individually explore Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion; however, Agreeableness and Neuroticism are grouped toegther. This is because Agreeableness and Neuroticism are both more internally-oriented traits that dictate why people engage with music rather than how they engage with it.